This Issue Spotlight explores the challenges that recipients of public benefits programs offering cash assistance encounter in accessing funds through financial products or services, with a specific focus on assistance provided on prepaid cards.
SNAP Waivers and Adaptations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey of State Agency Perspectives in 2020 is a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy (IHSP) based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA). This research seeks to understand perspectives from state SNAP administrators on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from waivers and flexibilities used to preserve equitable access to SNAP during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on state agency survey responses, this report summarizes key findings from the first calendar year of pandemic response and provides policy considerations for the future of SNAP. This research was supported by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy
This report describes key elements of the American Rescue Plan Act and how it would reduce the projected poverty rate for 2021. Various projections regarding the effects of the policy are described in this report.
This report explores technologies that have the potential to significantly affect employment and job quality in the public sector, the factors that drive choices about which technologies are adopted and how they are implemented, how technology will change the experience of public sector work, and what kinds of interventions can protect against potential downsides of technology use in the public sector. The report categories technologies into five overlapping categories including manual task automation, process automation, automated decision-making systems, integrated data systems, and electronic monitoring.
Benefits Data Trust (BDT), in collaboration with the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), conducted a nationwide analysis of how states coordinate across Medicaid and SNAP programs to streamline access to benefits.
This report explores how despite unresolved concerns, an audit-centered algorithmic accountability approach is being rapidly mainstreamed into voluntary frameworks and regulations.
This policy blueprint outlines six actionable steps for state governments to improve digital identity infrastructure, focusing on security, equity, innovation, and privacy.
This resource provides guidance on streamlining enrollment across public benefit programs to improve efficiency, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance access for eligible individuals and families.
The existing system for evaluating state safety net programs does not adequately capture the human experience of accessing services. This new National Safety Net Scorecard is a more meaningful set of metrics that can effectively asses the true state of the current program delivery landscape and measure progress over time, creating a more human-centered safety net.
This report from the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program outlines efforts to use identity verification to reduce improper payments in government programs, while mitigating bias and disparate impacts.
The Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP)
This report presents evidence on the use of algorithmic accountability policies in different contexts from the perspective of those implementing these tools, and explores the limits of legal and policy mechanisms in ensuring safe and accountable algorithmic systems.
